Surgeons feud leaves patients in limbo

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KERRY O'BRIEN: In an unprecedented step, Queensland Health Authority shut the state's only cardio-thoracic surgery unit outside Brisbane, blaming poisonous relations between the service's surgical staff for the closure. Senior surgeons, junior doctors and trainees at the cardio-thoracic unit have accused each other of bullying, harassment and incompetence. Queensland Health says the atmosphere in the unit was so toxic, it was putting patient safety at risk. Heart patients in North Queensland who were waiting for surgery are now being forced to travel 1,400km south to Brisbane for their operations. The infighting in Townsville is so bad it seems the state's corruption watchdog, the Crimes and Misconduct Commission is being called in to investigate.

Mark Willesee reports from Townsville.

MARK WILLESEE: To many they have the touch of God. These cardio-thoracic surgeons can stop a human heart, recondition it, then get it beating again. Theirs is a skill in short supply. But at the Townsville Hospital cardio-thoracic surgery unit, bad blood between staff has paralysed the entire operation.

ANDREW JOHNSON, MEDICAL SERVICES, TOWNSVILLE HOSPITAL: Toxic, poisonous, I think the slightly less emotive term dysfunctional has characterised the relationships for a very long time.

ROSS CARTMILL, AMA QUEENSLAND: It's profoundly disappointing. In all my professional life I've never seen it before.

MARK WILLESEE: Since 1994, Townsville Hospital has housed Queensland's only cardio-thoracic surgery unit outside of Brisbane, 1,400km to the south, servicing hundreds of thousands of people from Mount Isa in the west to Mackay in the south. But Queensland Health closed it down earlier this month not because of a lack of funds or a shortage of staff, rather because the unit's four surgeons and two trainees were at each other's throats.

VIC CALLANAN, DIRECTOR OF ANAETHESIA, TOWNVILLE HOSPITAL: There's been a total lack of cooperation and I think what's really happened they've lost respect for one another.

ANDREW JOHNSON: We've had warnings, we've had attempted mediations, we've had rules, we've tried everything that we've got to try and make things work. Unfortunately, the group of people that were working in our cardio-thoracic surgical service had each made allegations about another member or members of the service each the subject of allegations. We'd investigated each of these claims and counterclaims and got to the point where we had to say the bottom line is they just couldn't work together.

VIC CALLANAN: Just take some deep breaths in and out, Joe.

MARK WILLESEE: Vic Callanan is the Director of Anaesthesia at Townsville Hospital, a position which put him in daily contact with the surgeons and staff of the cardio-thoracic unit.

VIC CALLANAN: And over the last few years I could see that the relationships amongst the surgeons within the unit were far from harmonious. And especially over the last year or so it had got worse and worse and worse. We thought this was nearing the point where some drastic action needed to be made.

MARK WILLESEE: That drastic action was to shut the unit, stand down the surgical staff, and to begin sending patients south to Brisbane. One of those stood down was Dr Inderjit Virdi, a senior cardiac surgeon with 30 years experience. He clashed with one of the unit's junior staff who accused him of bullying and harassment, charges Dr Virdi was latest cleared off. The decision to close the cardio-thoracic unit has been backed by the Australian Medical Association, which says staff infighting was putting patient safety at risk.

ROSS CARTMILL: A unit in cardio-thoracic surgery wasn't functioning in a safe manner that we could say to the patients in the community they're offering a safe service. We felt the service was not safe.

DON KANE: There are some discussions taking place this afternoon.

MARK WILLESEE: But the head of the Salaried Doctors Union in Queensland, Don Kane, says the real problem in Townsville is not the brawling among the surgical staff but a shortage of resources and a lack of management at the hospital.

DON KANE: There have been staff issues. That's unquestionable. The thing is that if you're a manager, you're always going to have staff issues and you have to get on and manage them. Now, you have to make decisions, some of those decisions are easy, some are difficult, but that's what you're getting paid for.

MARK WILLESEE: The four surgeons and two junior staff at the centre of this fiasco say they're prevented by Queensland Health from speaking to the 7:30 Report but one has told this program that management is to blame for the problems in the cardio-thoracic unit, saying the hospital bosses ignored concerns about the competency of junior staff, refused to open a second existing operating theatre to help ease patient waiting lists and overreacted to disputes which naturally flare in a high pressure workplace. However, management says the disputes were personal, protracted and were piling up. So much so it took three people to carry the files containing the complaints. These allegations have now been passed on to Queensland's corruption watchdog. But while the surgical staff and hospital management bicker, the patients and their families are left to wonder about their future. Syd Dart was waiting for triple bypass surgery when the Townsville cardio-thoracic unit was shut down. He's in no doubt who is to blame.

SYD DART, CARDIAC PATIENT: Instead of blaming the cardio-thoracic surgeries for the entire fiasco, you've got to include the director of medical services and the only honourable thing that Dr Johnson should do is to himself suspend himself from duty, step aside, resign.

MARK WILLESEE: While Andrew Johnson has no intention of stepping down as the director of medical services at Townsville Hospital, he does acknowledge that some patients have been traumatised by the closure of the cardio-thoracic surgical unit.

ANDREW JOHNSON: For some this have been a very tortuous time, particularly for the in-patients who have been transferring down to Brisbane over the last week with the vagaries of the transport system, some requiring flying doctor service transports. We've had them on stand-by for their trip down to Brisbane and some of those people who have really been quite significantly affected and we really regret that. I personally regret that.

SHIRLEY DART: It will be OK.

SYD DART: I'm going to be fine.

MARK WILLESEE: For Syd Dart's wife, Shirley, the uncertainty has been an extra trauma her family could do without.

SHIRLEY DART: Disastrous. Sorry. No, the children are finding it very difficult. And it's just been going on for so long. They should not have closed it.

MARK WILLESEE: The day after this interview, Syd Dart was flown to Brisbane for surgery on his heart. It's unlikely the staff at the Townsville cardio-thoracic surgery unit will be kept on at the hospital. Their fate along with the fate of service itself, is uncertain.

ANDREW JOHNSON: We have around 700,000 people draining into our service here. That's from an area one and a half times the size of France. That group of people needs a service and they need a service from surgeons who are willing to work together and able to do so in a safe and effective manner. I am committed to making that happen as quickly as we can.

DONE KANE: Well I think it will take a long, long time in Townsville at the moment because of the problems is not an attractive place for people to want to go to work. Therefore they're going to have recruitment difficulties.

ROSS CARTMILL: You can't get a cardio-thoracic surgeon tomorrow. And it's unrealistic for the community to expect we could rectify the current situation or have a centre in North Queensland operating in a functional manner without getting the staff together in 12 months, it's really a guess but a realistic guess.